Sunny Winter Beach -- Post 1

Yesterday was another gorgeous day in Grand Marais. One of my favorite things to do in the winter is to cross country ski down the beach. Since temperatures are going to climb into the 40s this week, I decided that yesterday had to be the day for me to give it a try. There was barely enough snow and I had to strategically ski around rocks, but I was able to ski from the end of Coast Guard Point most of the way to the mouth of Sable River and back. The sun highlighted the winter wonders created by the storm. It was beautiful. I'll post the pictures over two days.

First, here is another shot of the bay showing the ice pack that has formed.

I parked at the end of Coast Guard Point.  There is quite a bit of ice covering the break water.

The sun, clouds, and ice made the beach quite photogenic.

Notice how some of the shore ice comprises frozen ice balls that accreted together at the end of the storm.  These ice chunks were broken off the shore ice by the waves, only to reassemble.

Here is a shot looking west...

I'm not sure how this seemingly delicate formation survived the storm.

More ice chunk mounds.

Nature's art....

When I drove down the hill into town, I noticed that some of the shore ice did break off  and was floating out in Lake Superior east of town.  We have had little to no floating ice for the past few years.  This is not good for agate hunters since floating ice can move rocks around the lake's basin.  When ice gets pushed up on shore, it collects sand and rock.  Then this ice can break off again only to float around the lake and be pushed up onto a different beach.  The shot below documents some of the sand and ice in the shore ice.  We are expecting wind changes this week, so hopefully we will have more shore ice break loose with the south wind and float around the lake to collect more rock.  In the spring, this floating ice is pushed back to shore by northwest winds to beach between Grand Marais and Whitefish Point.  Then this ice melts and dumps its rock that hopefully will bring new agate to our beach.